Most law firms today are wrangling with issues related to alternative fee structures. Whether we want to change or not, client expectations demand that we make choices that will move us away from the traditional billable-hour approach. Deciding what new billing method(s) to implement in our various areas of practice can be difficult, and the implementation of them can bring a host of other challenges.

Patrick J. Lamb has thirty years of litigation experience to his credit, and has experimented with several forms of alternative fee structure. His book is a compendium of everything litigation lawyers should think about when they consider new fee structures, and offers practical advice on putting them into practice.

And as always, I encourage all law firms whose work includes litigation to check out Patrick’s book. I invite your feedback on this and any other subject either through the Comments section below, or directly via email.

Contrary to what most of us might think, the article says, “The most important character trait of a leader is one that you’re more likely to associate with a dull person than a dynamic leader: predictability. The more predictable you are, day after day, the better.”

The article points out that Google may be a reliable source of guidance for other businesses due to the thoroughness with which the company collects data from employees by means of “upward feedback surveys,” on leadership qualities and other issues. The author then goes on to explain why consistency and reliability may be more important in leading others in the workplace than, let us say, the ability to inspire. In short,

“…when managers are predictable, they remove a roadblock from employees’ path — themselves.”

I encourage you to check out the article, and then to let me know what you think about it — or any other matter — either through the comments section below, or directly via email.

Kudos to the law firm of Verrill Dana LLP for ranking as one of the top law firms in the US for its percentage of female partners.

A nationwide survey by Law360 showed that Verrill Dana is among the top 25 firms in the country with the highest concentration of female partners – earning the company 14th place in Law360s “2014 Class of Ceiling Smashers.”

At Verrill Dana, a full-service law firm with more than 100 lawyers, 32% of the firm’s partners are women. Law360 reports that, by contrast, only 21% of law-firm partners nationally are women – despite the fact that women make up 43% of all non-partners.

Obviously, the national balance between male and female partners will not be equitable until it reflects the gender balance in the practice as a whole, but firms like Verrill Dana LLP are to be commended for their achievement, and congratulated for their well deserved national recognition.

As always, I invite your feedback on this and any other subject either through the Comments section below, or directly via email.

I was privileged to have been asked by the American Bar Association to write an article about the future of the legal profession for “The Annual Big Ideas Issue” of Law Practice Magazine (July/August 2014). Click on the image to read the article in full.

I recently wrote a post for Edge International Communiqué on the perils of making age-based assumptions about our legal-profession colleagues. I share it here for those who missed it.

Both older and younger lawyers can let all kinds of intergenerational nonsense get in the way of clear thinking. The misunderstandings that result can do actual damage to their firms.

Older lawyers have told me that lawyers in the younger generation simply do not have the values that they did. “The younger generation expects to have it all. They didn’t need to earn it the way we did. They lack our principles and they lack empathy. Mature lawyers have to suffer and figure out what to do with these aberrations.”

For their part, younger lawyers have knowledge of technology that the senior lawyers at the firm do not. Some seem to believe that the mature generation should just scramble into their graves. Then, free of the deadwood, they will be able to get on with utilizing the best and most modern technology to serve the clients of the firm.

As most rational people realize, both points of view are riddled with emotional nonsense. The younger generation is not lazy. The younger generation does not lack values. The younger generation has empathy and wants to serve others. They may want to do things a little differently than their predecessors, but they are no less righteous or valuable.

For their part, some senior people at law firms understand technology better than the newer generations. “What?” you may say. “How can this be? The younger generation texts rather than using voicemail. These younger lawyers understand gaming technology. Isn’t gamification an important new concept with a host of real-world applications?”

These are opinions. But what is the reality? In my work with law firms, I have noticed that while the younger generation may text rather than use voicemail, and may prefer email to picking up the telephone, there is no guarantee whatsoever that the thirty-something lawyer has any clue about how to use current technology to manage projects or to streamline systems. Please note that I didn’t say that the younger generation isn’t at the forefront of the evolving technology. It is. But for the most part, the technology leaders just don’t happen to be lawyers. Furthermore, in many of the firms I serve, it is the senior practitioners who have been struggling to figure out how to add value to quench the insatiable appetite of the ever-more demanding clients. Not every senior lawyer is so forward-thinking, to be sure, but a good many of them are.

In short, you simply can’t predict mindset or receptivity based on vintage or era. To do so is “ageism” – whether you are making presumptions about younger people or older ones.

My strong recommendation to those law firms who do not yet have research and development (and/or “skunk works”) groups is that they get busy and start forming them. And don’t let your bigotry exclude any generation. Invite those who are interested. Invite those who care. Let them run up the mast and be your early warning system. Give them some room. They don’t need a lot of budget to read and explore and understand what is going on around them. And if they do recommend something, be slow to reject their recommendation.

To most of us, courtesy and consideration are almost second nature. However, Michael Fertik — founder of reputation.com — says that when we assume a leadership capacity, being “too nice” can actually be detrimental to our organizations.

Many yield to [the instinct to be nice], because it feels much easier to be liked. Few people want to be the bad guy. But leaders are also expected to make the tough decisions that serve the company or the team’s best interests. Being too nice can be lazy, inefficient, irresponsible, and harmful to individuals and the organization.

Fertik sets out several scenarios in which a leader’s being “too nice” can be counterproductive. When managing a difficult or non-productive employee, for example, a clean cut may be the best strategy for both the employee and the company, even though it may be the most difficult move to make.

I encourage those who are working in leadership capacities in law firms to consider Fertik’s words, and to determine how his thoughts may be applied to the work you do. As always, I invite your feedback on this and any other subject either through the Comments section below, or directly via email.

In a recent Harvard Business Review blog post, journalist Warren Berger discusses the importance to effective leadership of asking the right questions – with the emphasis on the word “right.”

“How you question is critical,” says Berger. “Questions can be great for engaging and motivating people, but they can just as easily be used to confront or blame, and can shift the mood from positive to negative.”

By way of example, Berger – author of A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas – offers five common questions that can get discussions off on the wrong foot. For example, he points out that “Haven’t we tried this already?” can “come off as condescending or even defeatist.” Instead he suggests changes to wording that focus on the positive rather than the negative (e.g., “If we tried this now, what would be different this time?”).

I believe that Berger’s suggestions are of benefit to law firm leaders as well as corporate leaders, and I encourage you to take a look at this article. As always, I welcome your feedback on this or any other subject related to law-firm management, either via the comments section, or directly by email.

The Legal Intelligencer has launched a series of articles that focus on “competitive intelligence” in the context of legal practice.

The term “competitive intelligence” refers to the ways in which one company makes itself aware of what other companies in the same field (i.e., its “competitors”) are doing. This may include tracking their business practices, assessing their client bases and fields of practice, monitoring their promotion and marketing initiatives, and other tactics.

The first installment in TheIntelligencer series points out that competitive intelligence among law firms is still in a “relatively nascent stage” and that even those firms that are using it in one form or another don’t necessarily agree on what the term means when applied to legal practice — or what it entails.

The article’s author, Gina Passarella, says that while such initiatives are today often undertaken only for specific purposes, such as pitching a prospective client, some law-firm consultants believe that ultimately “the goal is to reach the strategy stage in which competitive intelligence analysts are assisting firm management in making long-range decisions such as mergers and office openings.”

Passarella quotes Jasmine Trillos-Decarie, director of marketing and business development at the Boston-based law firm Foley Hoag, who predicts that as growing a client base increasingly means attracting work from other firms, law-firm approaches to competitive intelligence will become more and more refined. However, she hopes that the practice will not degenerate to include the “take down” tactics that occur elsewhere in corporate America.

The title of the article in The Legal Intelligencer – “Competitive Intelligence: Spy Games or Market Research?” – could itself lead to some interesting discussion.

What are your thoughts on this subject? Let me know in the comments section below, or directly via email.

At first blush, you might ask what a bionic arm catching objects in mid-flight has to do with the practice of law. I assert: “Everything.”

Who are the lawyers who represent these evolutionary products? Clearly, there will be lots of intellectual property involved, but I say that the list goes on.

Here are just three legal areas that could relate to technological advances:

Lobbying: Just like Google trying to get approval to put its driverless cars on the road, legislation may be required for many applications of a robotic arm.

Liability: If these arms replace humans in various situations, what if they miss? What if someone is injured?

Labor and Employment: What if these arms are going to replace workers who are the subject of a collective agreement?

Somebody in your law firm needs to be thinking about how the evolution of technology is going to impact both existing and prospective clients – and the practice of law. Most firms will ignore this, leaving the spoils for the forward-thinking firms who get their hands (human ones – not robotic ones) around all this and leave their competitors in the dust.

I invite your thoughts on this and all topics relating to the practice of law, either through the comments section or directly by email.